Product Description

ThingMagic M6e-Micro LTE Embedded RFID Module Developer Kit

The Micro-LTE Developer Kit is designed to meet the demands of high performance RFID handheld, mobile, and stationary readers and is optimized for applications that require reading small tag populations. This embedded UHF RFID Reader offers two antenna ports and supports the ability to transmit up to +30 dBm for demanding applications. The edge connections for signals, power, and RF allow the module to be soldered directly to a motherboard as a standard component. The on-board connectors allow the module to be mated to a motherboard as an add-on option. This developer kit is the perfect way to make the most of your M6e-Micro LTE reader module.

NOTE: This product is a reader module – NOT a finished RFID reader – and is meant for OEM and developers to embed into products or to be used in the creation of a new finished reader. If you are interested in an existing finished reader product, check out our line of finished ThingMagic readers.

Why buy this module?

The Micro-LTE reader module is optimized for buiding a reader for applications with small tag populations. Its small size, low power consuption, and wide RF output range make it an excellent choice for mobile uses like small volume tag commissioning stations and point of sales readers.

The associated reader module enables you to build a reader with serial and USB interfaces to support both board-to-board and board-to-host connectivity. The module development kit gives you everything you need to connect to a PC and start reading tags. The Mercury API is loaded on your host processor so you can write software to control the module in the DevKit chassis. The Mercury API supports the entire line of ThingMagic finished readers and embedded RFID modules.

Full schematics of the DevKit are available to support building of your own application-specific reader.The Universal Reader Assistant reduces complexity for novice users but still allows for low-level control for advanced developers by enabling testing and tuning of reader settings, antennas, and tags for your workflow.

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Posted by Peter Eliyahu Kornfeld

The embedded module at the heart of the kit is very powerful one, but I found few things missed...
1. The module mounted on a board without through-holes ,so it is very hard to manipulate it in prototyping on a white-board...You have to solder the connections instead of using some stackable headers and wires...
2. The development kit provides a developer-board, on which the module mounted, but there is no documentation of it...You have to figure out the switches, connectors and pins on your own...
3. Even it is obvious that a high level API like Mercury API can be a bottleneck of performance and of true integration, and even it is obvious that Mercury API does nothing else but wraps the serial communications with opcodes, there is no whatsoever documentation of those opcodes... This of course means that you have to have a real computer to communicate with the module, and can not use a microcontroller of 10th of the cost...
4. As the Mercury API used to communicate with all kind of modules from the same series it has endless layers to resolve differences, there is no hardware specific API, and that si a contradict to the idea of embedded modules...
5. As for paper documentation, it is very vague even for the API provided, and the main demo (in my case for C#) not even works...

So with this board you have two options:
1. Make a quick, but dumb prototype, that will cost you much and will provide difficulties when moving to production...
2. Take your time and read the Mercury API code to see what you really can do, and probably remove all the unnecessary code layers to get real performance...